is pressing upon us, and even the modified
duty on paper remains, the injury to a
multitude of minds and to a host of fortunes
is so serious that we are impelled to the
inquiry how it is that the Americans, with
their threefold demand, get thoroughly well
supplied.

We should add that we understate the
truth when we call the consumption per head
threefold.  It is threefold by weight: but the
Americans use a great deal of very thin
paper, such as is rarely used by us.  Consequently
the threefold by weight could amount
to hardly less than fourfold by surface.  How
is this vast quantity obtained?

Here again, in finding the answer to this
question, we meet new evidence of the
extraordinary variety of people and ways
existing in the United States.  A glance at the
paper-makers of that country shows things
as striking as our glance at the scribes round
its outer circle.  First, there is the great, the
grand paper-manufacturer.  His steam-engine
puffs and pants like any other; his mills cover
large spaces of ground; and his machinery is
of the newest and best.  One great difference
between him and our manufacturers is, that
he has the command of the world's rags, as
far as they go, and of many substitutes, when
there are no more rags.  Our excise duty is
such a burden on the manufacture that we
cannot compete with him in the purchase of
foreign rags; and he even comes here and
buys up our precious tatters before our eyes.
Another great difference between him and us
is, that he can make any experiments he likes
with new materials, at no other cost, in case
of failure, than the partial loss of labour and
material: whereas, we cannot try such
experiments, because the excise authorities must
claim the duty of from one hundred to three
hundred per cent on all paper that is made,
whether it turns out saleable or not.  Our
manufacture cannot improve, our mills cannot
multiply, and the price of paper cannot come
down, but must continue to rise, while that
duty goes on to be levied.  While our paper-
makers are scolded by booksellers, authors,
editors, printers, packers, and manufacturers,
for the exorbitant price of their article, they
are not growing rich, but very much the
contrary.  They are, in fact, the first victims of
a monopoly which they have no desire
whatever to preserve.  Not only the duty
makes the manufacture a monopoly, but the
restrictions which attend the duty leave
no freedom to any man's ingenuity or
enterprise.  So our manufacturers sink into low
spirits, instead of rising into high fortunes,
under the enormous prices of eighteen
hundred and fifty-four.  They are stormed by
correspondents whom they cannot supply; they are
scolded by customers for the amounts charged
in their invoices; they pay a high price for
material every month; the best kind of material
becomes deficient; and if an inferior
kind is used, down comes a deluge of
complaints, to add to the sorrows of the involuntary
monopolist, who is growing poor himself
while giving satisfaction to nobody.  He
grows silent at his meals; he looks grave in
the mill; he can hardly be civil to the excise
collector; and he tells his wife after a
vexatious day at the works, that he shall go to
America.  His American rival, meantime,
is buying land, building houses, setting up his
carriage; perpetually adorning his pattern-
room with fresh specimens of paper of all
colours; and often gratifying his customers
with offers of a new article which makes a
good substitute for one which is growing
dearer.

What else do we see over there?  Away
from towns and steam engines, on some rapid
near a new settlement in Ohio or Illinois, we
see a humbler mill, worked by water-power.
Here are no roods of drying-rooms for
snow-white paper.  There is not much snow-white
paper made here, because the owner has
not command of much material that will
bear bleaching.  In the sheds we see
overhead all sorts of dingy hues; and in the
packing-room a wide range of browns and
yellows, with plenty of grays, and some
greens and pinks.  We never see such an
assortment of tinted papers in England;
where coloured paper is so little used that
the Chancellor of the Exchequer might, as
well as not, take off the duty from coloured
papers.

This would cost the revenue a mere
trifle, while it would be a vast boon to the
public.  Our American newspapers come to
us in wrappers of brown and yellow, so tough,
as never, by any accident, to arrive with the
smallest rent in the edge, and bearing the ink
as well as any paper whatever.  This is made
from the refuse of the Indian corn-plant.
Our letters come to us in envelopes of pale
yellow, gray, or green,—perfectly serviceable,
and rather pretty than not.  They are made
of any one of half-a-dozen substances which
have every good quality but that they will
not bleach.  The British manufacturers
complain that we, their customers, are saucy
about paper, and that we will use none but
the whitest.  We must have white envelopes,
they say, a white surface for our washing
bills, and snowy missives for the butcher and
fishmonger.  We, on the other hand, declare
that we have never had a chance of showing
a preference.  Give us the option between
white envelopes and tinted, at a difference of
a few pence in the hundred, and see whether
we do not buy the cheaper sort!  But they
are not to be had, and the reason why they
are not to be had is that the excise will not
allow experiments to be made, on fair
conditions.  We do not hesitate to say that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer must repeal the
duty on coloured papers at least, at the first
possible moment.  Prices are rising to an
unendurable point; and so simple a palliative
as setting free a portion of material that